


Better and Better and Better

by QueenAng



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Friends to Lovers, Ghost Bumblebee, M/M, Other, someone please get starscream some therapy 2k20
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:22:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23900770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenAng/pseuds/QueenAng
Summary: "You're getting better.""At hiding it."Starscream's talks with Bumblebee don't go unnoticed. Wheeljack steps in.
Relationships: Starscream/Wheeljack (Transformers)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 105





	Better and Better and Better

At first, Wheeljack thought Starscream was in a meeting. He hesitated at the door to Starscream’s office as his audials picked up Starscream’s characteristic muttering. Quickly, lest Starscream somehow sense him eavesdropping, he took a step back and to the side, data-pad clutched in his servos like a lifeline. An excuse, really. _No, ‘course I’m not here for no reason, I got a data-pad with me!_ It had scantly anything on it, if someone actually decided to look.

Wheeljack drummed his fingers on the back of the data-pad as he waited for someone to exit the office. If Starscream had begun muttering, he must be close to snapping at whatever politician was in there. Someone was bound to run out like a turbofox with its tail between its legs any moment.

Nobody did.

Wheeljack checked his chronometer to make sure he wasn’t exaggerating the time. Three kliks, no bots running for their lives. That was… unusual. Worryingly so.

Wheeljack crept back up to the door, close enough for his sensitive audials to pick up a bit of what was going on inside. He didn’t have to try hard.

“—and she thinks she can just oust me, like some common politician!” Starscream was saying. “I’ll show her. I’ll show them all.”

There was a pause. Wheeljack expected to hear another voice trying to soothe Starscream’s paranoia, but it never came.

Starscream huffed. “Of course I’m thinking about the next election!” Another pause, followed by, “I don’t care how far away it is! That isn’t the _point_.” Wheeljack could hear Starscream’s thrusters clicking against the floor of his office as he paced. “No, no. Something is going on. I know it. She must be planning something.”

For a moment, the silence persisted, broken by a bang. Starscream must have slammed his servo down on his desk. “Why do you keep defending her?” he snapped.

Wheeljack recoiled at the sudden yell. He clenched the data-pad tighter. Starscream could have been on the comms with someone, but whoever he was speaking to was about to get a never-ending audial-full of pre-prepared rants. Wheeljack had heard a few of them. No bot could argue someone in a circle like Starscream. No fight would end until Starscream let it, until something else took Starscream’s attention away.

Okay. He could go in. He had a reason, had his data-pad. Maybe it wasn’t important, but Wheeljack remembered how his audials had rang after Starscream gave Windblade a thorough dressing-down, and he figured he might as well save some poor spark from the same fate.

He slammed his servo against the scanner before he could talk himself out of it. He winced a bit at the sudden noise, but as the door slid open, he saw that Starscream apparently hadn’t noticed.

The seeker paced behind his desk, alternating his back and side to Wheeljack. His wings drooped low at his back. Most of the lights had been shut off – the glass on the floor suggested ‘broken’ would be a more apt description. A stack of data-pads lay abandoned on the floor to the side of Starscream’s wide desk. His chair had tipped over; Starscream paced mindlessly around the obstacle.

His servos were clenched into fists at his side, raised as though ready to throw a punch, not pressing a comm as Wheeljack suspected. And, as Wheeljack had thought, there was no other bot in the room.

Wheeljack let the door close behind him. “Starscream?”

Starscream paused, drawing back like he was ready to leap at Wheeljack. He relaxed a moment later. “You,” Starscream said, his voice dropping low. “What do you want?”

Wheeljack took another moment to survey the room. “You all right?” he asked.

“ _Fine_ ,” Starscream bit out. “Why are you here?”

“Who were you talking to?” Wheeljack pressed.

“Who I speak to is none of your business!” Starscream snapped. “What do you want?”

Wheeljack raised the data-pad in his servos. “I brought this for you. I did a few more calculations on Metroplex. Thought you might want to look at them before I started working on anything.” It was nothing important, but Wheeljack kept that to himself.

Some of the tension visibly bled out of Starscream’s frame. “Thank you,” he said, voice inching. “You can set it with the others.”

Wheeljack looked back to Starscream’s desk, to the mess of data-pads discarded on the floor. A few had discernibly cracked screens. Wheeljack wondered if Starscream had paced over them at some point, in the same way he seemed to thoughtlessly avoid his chair.

Starscream realized what had gotten his attention a moment later. His wings shot up in embarrassment. “Ah, right, I— I must have knocked those over when I got up. I’ll—”

Wheeljack was already on his knees, sweeping the data-pads up into a pile, when Starscream fell into place beside him. Starscream hurriedly gathered up each one he could get his servos on, uncaring as the data-pads scratched against one another as he scooped them up. Wheeljack took a bit more time, putting each one the same way. Starscream didn’t need to mess it up more trying to get him out of here in good time; he had plenty of that.

Wheeljack placed the stack back at the edge of Starscream’s desk. From his side, Starscream began to shift the data-pads minutely in a mimicry of preoccupation.

He didn’t mean to snoop – really, he didn’t; he knew Starscream handled things way above his pay-grade – but the bold headline atop one of the data-pads was meant to draw a reader’s attention, and his optics unconsciously strayed towards it.

**_Windblade Tours New Vos; Possibly Begins Election Campaign_ **

_The Camien native, who serves as a City-Speaker on Cybertron, visited New Vos last cycle to meet with Vosnian delegates, conceivably in an effort to jumpstart an election campaign. In the—_

Starscream’s servo slapped down on the data-pad, drawing it away from Wheeljack’s view.

“Thank you for the information,” Starscream began, “but if you would please—”

“It’s just a gossip magazine,” Wheeljack said, before he could think better of it.

Starscream paused. “Pardon?”

Wheeljack gestured to the data-pad, half-hidden under Starscream’s servo. “The news story, about Windblade. The magazine only does gossip. Pretty much anything they publish, you can guarantee the opposite is true.” Wheeljack shifted. “I used to be able to get Ironhide to believe some of it, before he caught on.”

Wheeljack couldn’t make out Starscream’s expression, but he knew it wasn’t a glare.

“Noted,” Starscream drawled.

Wheeljack took his leave.

* * *

He wasn’t sure what loose screw in his processor made him think going by Starscream’s hab-suite would be a good idea, but now wasn’t the time to get it fixed.

Wheeljack had only seen the tail-end of the screaming match between Starscream and Windblade. From what he gathered, the Lost Light was making an unplanned stop on Cybertron for a quick repair, in a port a few cities over. Starscream tried to veto this; his counterparts argued with him, and Windblade took the helm. If there was any way to not resolve an argument with Starscream, it was to bring Windblade into it.

Chromia noticed Wheeljack enter. She stood at the edge of the room, optics tired and arms crossed. “I’ll get mine if you’ll get yours,” she said.

Before Chromia could move towards them, however, the two broke away from each other. Starscream had thrown his servos up and said, “Fine!” before moving towards the hall. Windblade yelled something after him, but Starscream was already transforming and flying through the building in his jet mode.

Chromia wished him good luck as Wheeljack set off to find him.

Wheeljack scoured the offices, the meeting rooms, anywhere public that Starscream might have gone. It was after hours, and most everything had shut down already, but that had never stopped Starscream before. It didn’t take long for Wheeljack to realize Starscream had probably retreated back to his quarters to lick his wounds. Part of him wanted to let him be, but another part…

Starscream had gone mad with paranoia over a gossip article. Wheeljack wasn’t sure he wanted to see the aftermath of Starscream dealing with Megatron’s very real return to Cybertron, however brief.

Damage control, Wheeljack told himself. He wasn’t intruding on Starscream, he was doing damage control.

Wheeljack hesitated at the door to Starscream’s hab. It hadn’t fully closed, a leg of a toppled piece of furniture halting the locking mechanism and giving Wheeljack a slight view inside. It was dark, and Wheeljack didn’t need to strain his audials to hear Starscream’s raving.

“She’s trying to get me killed!” was the first thing Wheeljack was able to make out. Some of Starscream’s words came out fritzed badly with static.

At first, Wheeljack assumed Starscream was ranting to himself, dispelling the remaining anger he hadn’t been able to let loose at Windblade before they stormed off their separate ways. Then Starscream said, “What do you mean, I’m _overreacting_? Are you insane?”

Wheeljack realized this was another episode like the office. Part of him knew he should go inside, diffuse the situation as quickly as possible, but another part of him was curious, and he hesitated.

“Repairs,” Starscream scoffed. “As if. Megatron probably sabotaged the ship to get it to land on Cybertron.”

A pause, and then Starscream said, “Well, obviously they wouldn’t land in Iacon! That would be too obvious. No, Megatron will sneak away as they do repairs.”

Pause.

“There isn’t anything I can do!” Starscream said. “I need to disappear for a few cycles. Find somewhere safe. Somewhere _he_ can’t find me.”

Pause.

“No, I can’t. They’d never listen to me. _You_ barely listen to me, and it’s not like you have anywhere else to be!”

Another pause, interrupted by Starscream scoffing. “I’m the only one who sees you. Bombshell succeeded in controlling Prowl; perhaps you are just an illusion meant to control me! I can’t listen to anything you say. You’re going to get me killed!”

Wheeljack winced at the mention of Prowl, and not a moment after he digested those words did Starscream continue his rant.

“You don’t understand! He can find me; wherever there is a former Decepticon, he has optics. But the Autobots don’t trust me enough to hide me either. And the NAILs… well, after Metalhawk…” Starscream trailed off. “I’ll be offline before the Lost Light leaves Cybertron.”

Once again, there was a pause, and Starscream said, “Of course I know he’s here to kill me. It’s what I would do. Loose strings, and all.”

All right, enough was enough. Wheeljack pushed the door open, stepping into the dark room.

He could barely make out the outline of Starscream’s frame in the blackness. The seeker had drawn curtains closed over every single one of the many windows, not letting a shred of moonlight inside. Wheeljack groped for a light, finally flipping one on.

Starscream flinched at the sudden brightness. He whirled around to face Wheeljack. “You—”

Wheeljack held his servos up in a placating gesture. “I heard a bit of that argument with Windblade. Figured you could use some company.”

Starscream’s frame remained tense. “How long have you been here?”

Instead of an answer, Wheeljack said, “What do you mean, you’re ‘ _the only one who sees him’_?” He took a step closer. “Who’ve you been talking to?”

“No one.” Starscream gestured to the empty room. “Obviously.”

“Starscream.”

The seeker’s jaw tensed. “I’m _fine_ ,” he insisted. “So you can leave now!”

“You’re not,” Wheeljack said.

“What do you care, Autobot?” he snapped. “Such a coincidence you’ve now appeared during two episodes. And so caring, as well. Perhaps I’m imaging you as well.”

Wheeljack wasn’t quite sure what to say, other than, “I’m real.”

“Obviously that’s what _you’d_ say.”

Wheeljack reached out and grabbed hold of one of Starscream’s servos before the seeker could turn his back to him. “I’m _real_ ,” he swore. “I’m right here. I _do_ care.” The words fell out of his mouth before he could think better of them, before he could consider that maybe he shouldn’t be admitting how close he had grown to Starscream. But then, what would Starscream care about a lowly engineer’s affections?

Starscream stared at him like Wheeljack really was a ghost. His gaze flickered down to their joined servos, and realization slowly began to dawn in Starscream’s optics. Wheeljack expected him to recoil, but he didn’t. He felt the cables and plates beneath his begin to relax, seemingly one at a time.

“All right,” Starscream relented, still staring at their servos. “You’re real. I couldn’t do that with him.”

“So talk to me,” Wheeljack said.

Starscream snorted. “You seem to have heard everything anyway.”

“Then next time,” Wheeljack said. “Next time you see… him. Talk to me.”

“You have better things to do.”

Yeah, he used to spend his time between working trying to find excuses to get into Starscream’s office. Having Starscream come down to him instead would clear up a huge block in his schedule. “I really don’t.”

Starscream smiled mirthlessly. “You will. They all do, eventually.” Not a moment later, he drew back and clasped his servos over his audials. “Will you just _shut up_? For _five nanokliks_?”

“Still here?” Wheeljack asked warily.

Starscream’s servos curled back into fists at his side. “Always,” he hissed.

* * *

Wheeljack did end up seeing more of Starscream. He doubted Starscream would throw himself wholeheartedly into Wheeljack’s advice to visit him, but it was a start, if nothing else. At first, Wheeljack felt like he was trying to force his way into a comm conversation while only hearing half of it. Starscream would switch between responding to Wheeljack’s inquiries about how he felt to berating an invisible specter in an instant.

His conspiracy theories remained alive and well, and much to Wheeljack’s dismay, he found that what he knew of Starscream’s paranoia barely scratched the surface.

“He must be doing this,” Starscream hissed, almost to himself. He ignored Wheeljack’s question of whether he wanted energon or not. “Such a coincidence that after _I_ win, _he’s_ still here. I bet this is all a game to him. A con on the ‘Con?”

“Starscream,” Wheeljack tried.

“—attempting to change me from the inside. What better way to control Cybertron than to take control of its ruler? No need, then, to worry about winning pesky elections or running a good campaign. Why bother when you—”

Wheeljack forcibly uncurled Starscream’s fisted servo and placed an energon cube in his grasp. Starscream’s gaze snapped from some corner over Wheeljack’s shoulder to the scientist’s face.

“Why are _you_ doing this?” Starscream said, his voice accusatory.

“You’re my friend,” Wheeljack said.

Starscream scoffed. The energon cube creaked warningly in his grasp. “I’m no one’s friend. That’s why I have a hallucinatory one to follow me around.”

* * *

How had Rung put it, when the little orange bot had been sent to talk to Wheeljack about the half of his faceplate that was scarred beyond repair, burned to the protoform? “Progress isn’t linear.”

Starscream trusted Wheeljack, that much was obvious from – well, everything else that had happened. But ‘vulnerability’ and ‘Starscream’ didn’t match up that well, and it wasn’t that much of a surprise to Wheeljack when Starscream would greet him and pretend as though everything was the same it had been cycles ago.

“Did you blow yourself up again?” Starscream said. He knocked his knuckles lightly against the back of Wheeljack’s helm as he passed. “Has your processor finally fried, Autobot?”

Wheeljack didn’t have it in him to get frustrated with Starscream’s games. The bot was surprisingly good at small talk, when that small talk revolved around engineering. Starscream fiddled idly with the tools on Wheeljack’s workbench. He ran analyses on data while Wheeljack looked over them. It was almost like having an assistant, except his assistant was an ex-Decepticon who could kill him before Wheeljack could reset his optics.

He enjoyed this time. He tried not to let it show, because Starscream needed a friend right now, and that was all. He tried to convince himself that he thought of Starscream the same way, and that plan fizzled out quickly. The whole reason he stumbled into this mess was because he wanted to get close to the jet. The reason he hadn’t left it behind was because he wanted to _stay_ close to him.

So Wheeljack ignored the jabs – laughed at the funny ones, much to Starscream’s disappointment – and made them energon to drink in the stillness of the lab.

* * *

There were times Wheeljack forgot about the promise all together.

Starscream was brilliant; Wheeljack thought the mech should have ended up in the science division rather than second-in-command, because if he had, the Decepticons would have won in a decade. His suave attitude didn’t dissipate beneath a mountain of data to crunch. Wheeljack found his work pile vanishing before his optics between the two of them.

It was easy to forget about it, while arguing with Starscream about the best placement of a fuel cell in their prototype. 90% of Wheeljack’s processor dedicated itself to the argument, to the passion of it, to the storm of ideas he had. The other 10% saw Starscream — just as passionate and half as dangerous as he seemed in politics, optics alight with fire and wings high behind his back — and thought some thoughts that had little to do with fuel cells.

Wheeljack loved those moments most of all. More than the quiet domesticity of having evening energon together. More than the pride he felt that he had earned the trust of Starscream. Those passionate moments, devoid of any real anger, where the world narrowed down to just the two of them and what was in their servos. Those were the moments Wheeljack felt he finally understood how the processor inside Starscream’s helm worked, and with that came the bright surge of satisfaction akin to solving a difficult physics problem.

Starscream was simple like that. Like quantum physics.

* * *

Wheeljack expected a culmination at some point. A violent eruption, because that was how Starscream seemed to come clean about most things. It made sense it would finally occur when the Lost Light landed a few cities over for its minor repairs.

He didn’t expect the quiet, the utter stillness.

Starscream vanished. From his office, his hab, their lab – and Wheeljack didn’t know when he started to think of it as _theirs_ rather than his. The grey walls seemed a lot more like a prison without the splotch of a brilliant red frame leaning against them. The quiet was unnerving; Starscream could make any room loud just by walking into it.

Wheeljack couldn’t find him, so he turned to the others. Windblade couldn’t find him. Chromia shrugged him off. Rattrap looked gleeful at the news. Ironhide shook his head and told Wheeljack he didn’t have to get close to every nuclear bomb he saw.

Wheeljack caught Rattrap slinking around the halls near his lab as he sulked through his walk back. Before the little devil could flee, Wheeljack grabbed his upper arm.

“I told you I don’t know anything!” Rattrap said.

Wheeljack offered some prototype weapons, and suddenly Rattrap remembered a storage closet Starscream converted into a personal safe room.

Wheeljack opened the door to his lab, letting Rattrap inside, before taking off for the floor Rattrap had directed him to. He scoured the doors until he found the one Rattrap indicated. It took some shoving, and quite a bit of pulling, but the door eventually gave way.

Rattrap hadn’t been kidding when he said Starscream converted this place into a safe room. Weapons lined the walls, spotless and organized. Empty data-pads rose in stacks beneath them. A small roll of blankets served as a makeshift berth and pillow. Starscream curled up not far away from it.

Wheeljack approached slowly; he had plenty of experience making his way around live landmines. He saw the glint of Starscream’s talons in the faint light issuing in from the hallway. He didn’t know what sort of weapons the jet had stored around him.

“Go away.” Starscream’s voice was flat. “Can’t you see your little pet project failed?”

“You’re not a failure,” Wheeljack said softly.

Starscream laughed humorlessly. “Oh, but I am, Autobot. I can win anything, no doubt, but no matter what I do, _he_ will still be there. If I can’t get rid of one dead mech, what chance do I have against a living one?”

Wheeljack got as close as he dared. The roll of blankets serving as a berth still separated them, but Wheeljack would be out of the way of Starscream’s claws if he struck out. He knelt down to the floor, curling his legs under him.

“What is it with you?” Starscream asked, almost to himself. “Why can’t you just give up and leave me alone?”

“I’m your friend,” Wheeljack said.

“So was Thundercracker. Didn’t stop him.”

“I’m not him.”

“No,” Starscream agreed. “You know me even less, yet you stick around so persistently. What makes you think you’re doing any good at all here?”

“You were getting better.”

“At _hiding it_.” Starscream flinched as soon as the words registered. His frame seemed to grow smaller. “Mechs see what they want to see, after all. I just _can’t stop_ seeing this one.”

Wheeljack dared to inch closer. “So you’re not better. So what? It’s not a race to get this fixed. Maybe you need more time. Or maybe we can try something different. Pit, maybe Rung can—”

“I’m not crazy,” Starscream snapped.

“I didn’t say you were,” Wheeljack said. “But whatever’s going on, you can’t keep doing it alone. You don’t need to, anyway.”

Starscream snorted. “Because you’re here?”

“Yeah.”

Starscream finally leveled a look at him. “Why should I believe you?” he said. “Why should I believe you any more than I believed all the others that left?”

“I promise no other mech is as stubborn. You can have a Wheeljack guarantee on that.”

A wry smile faintly crossed Starscream’s faceplates. “Oh? And what’s that worth?”

“Anything you want.”

* * *

Starscream wasn’t quite sure when they crossed over from ‘friends’ to ‘lovers’. Nights in the lab transitioned to nights at the bar, which transitioned to date nights. The servo that would rest on his shoulder as he ranted became a servo that brushed against his wings. They’d never clarified anything; they’d never had to.

“You’re happy,” Bumblebee observed one night, as Starscream entered his hab-suite early in the morning.

“And you’re ugly,” Starscream responded without hesitation.

Bumblebee didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to; the wide grin he fixed on Starscream was insight enough into what he thought.

Between politics, Windblade, the Camiens, Metroplex, and Wheeljack, Starscream found himself busy. Busy enough that he didn’t notice the decrease in his little yellow friend’s advice. Finally.

“Excuse you,” Starscream had said, cutting off Bumblebee’s speech on morality. “I have my own pet Autobot now. A real one. I will ask his opinion, thank you.”

Bumblebee looked far too pleased to be properly insulted.

The culmination once more came quietly, in silence and darkness and stillness. Wheeljack walked Starscream back up to his hab, despite swaying on his pedes a bit. Starscream insisted it would be more sensible for the jet to walk him home, but Wheeljack said, “No, no. I’m a _gentle_ - _mech_. See?” His little speech was distracting enough that Starscream had to yank him out of the way of a light pole.

Once in his hab, Starscream leaned against his door, vents slowing down. It had been a long time since he had laughed, truly laughed. Even longer since he felt so… free. No politics, no mixed messages. Wheeljack was stubborn and blunt and Starscream loved him for it.

He was still smiling when he called out, only a tad bit triumphantly, “Oh, Bumblebee!”

Silence greeted his audials.

Starscream onlined his optics to full power and peered about the black room. No bright yellow bug stood out garishly against his furniture. “Bumblebee?”

The room remained quiet.

* * *

The singularity was lonely. Bumblebee made himself useful where he could best – at Starscream’s side, trying to quell the worst of his Decepticon ways. That alone was a full-time job.

Bumblebee surveyed the scene before him once more. Starscream had fallen into recharge, his faceplates tucked into Wheeljack’s neck. The grounder had a servo resting lightly on a wing, the other holding a data-pad that provided the sole source of light in the dark room.

Well, it was far past time for Bumblebee to take a well-earned vacation.


End file.
